Policy —

US DOJ just barely preserves competition between Verizon FiOS, cable

New FiOS buildouts may still be a pipe dream.

When Verizon Wireless announced a $3.6 billion purchase of wireless spectrum from a group of cable companies, numerous antitrust concerns were raised. T-Mobile tried to block the deal out of fear that Verizon would unfairly dominate the race to LTE. But it turned out the biggest concerns had to do with whether Verizon and the cable companies were wheeling and dealing in a way that eliminates competition for home Internet users between Verizon FiOS and cable.

Verizon Wireless’s purchase of airwaves comes from SpectrumCo, a consortium dominated by Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks. But there was also a side deal between Verizon, those three cable companies, and Cox Communications, consisting of “a series of commercial agreements that require the companies to sell each other’s products and create an exclusive technology research joint venture,” in the Justice Department’s words. The fear was that the deal was basically an agreement not to compete for Internet users in each other's territory.

Today, US officials allowed the Verizon Wireless spectrum purchase and joint selling agreements to go forward—but it is imposing key limitations on the commercial agreements aimed at preserving Verizon FiOS as a real alternative to the cable companies’ video and broadband products. The concessions mainly target areas in which FiOS has already been built out. In areas where Verizon hasn’t yet built FiOS, it can simply re-sell its competitors’ cable products.

An antitrust lawsuit was filed today by US officials against Verizon and the cable companies. But the lawsuit isn’t likely to turn into a protracted battle. The DOJ proposed a settlement alleviating all of the concerns raised in the suit, and a consent decree was entered into by Verizon, the cable companies, and the DOJ, with the goal of wrapping up the whole process soon.

Good for Comcast and Verizon, but not good for competition

Both Verizon and Comcast have issued statements in support of the consent decree and proposed settlement, and for good reason. Comcast said even with limitations on the deal, Comcast will get to resell Verizon Wireless services and Verizon Wireless will have the "ability to market our products in virtually all of our footprint."

If left unchecked, the DOJ says the Verizon/cable joint marketing agreements would have been very much like an agreement not to compete, resulting in higher prices and lower quality services.

“Verizon and the cable companies are direct competitors in many local markets throughout the United States where Verizon offers video, voice, and broadband service,” the DOJ said today while announcing approval of the spectrum buy. “The series of commercial agreements between Verizon and the cable companies would have threatened this competition. Most notably, the agreements, as originally structured, would have required Verizon Wireless to sell the cable companies’ services on an ‘equivalent basis’ with FiOS where FiOS is available, thereby reducing Verizon’s ability and incentive to sell its own services aggressively.”

Even with the newly imposed limitations, there is reason to be concerned that joint marketing agreements will help Verizon and cable companies maintain a status quo in which many communities have little or no competition for home Internet service.

FiOS is a desirable service to many consumers because of its speed, but Verizon has only built it out in a few parts of the country. The concessions demanded by the Department of Justice probably won’t force Verizon to dramatically increase availability of FiOS service. It seems to be aimed primarily at preventing competition from becoming any less robust than it already is today, because of provisions that affect only the limited areas in which FiOS is already sold. The settlement announcement does not say the competition landscape will be improved. Instead it will remain unchanged.

Verizon can't resell cable services in FiOS areas

The DOJ said the settlement it proposes “forbids Verizon Wireless from selling cable company products in FiOS areas and removes contractual restrictions on Verizon Wireless’s ability to sell FiOS, ensuring that Verizon’s incentives to compete aggressively against the cable companies remain unchanged. In addition, under the proposed settlement, Verizon Wireless’s ability to resell the cable companies’ services to customers in areas where Verizon sells DSL Internet service ends in December of 2016 (subject to potential renewal at the department’s sole discretion), thereby preserving Verizon’s incentives to reconsider its decision to stop building out its FiOS network and otherwise innovate in its DSL territory.”

While the DOJ raised the right sorts of concerns about the deal’s impact on FiOS/cable competition, at least one public interest group says it didn’t go far enough in forcing Verizon to compete against cable in areas where FiOS has not yet been deployed.

“The proposed conditions on this transaction attempt to alleviate some of the harms that will arise from a lack of competition, and policymakers deserve credit for trying to make the best of a bad deal. However, it is not enough for the anti-competitive cross-selling agreement to be limited in time or scope—it should not happen at all,” Gigi Sohn, CEO of advocacy group Public Knowledge said in a statement.

Research Director Mark Cooper of the Consumer Federation of America goes further, saying approval of the joint venture between Verizon and cable “demonstrates that the primary pillar on which the Telecommunications Act of 1996 stood—intramodal and intermodal competition between broadband platforms—has collapsed in a short 16 years.”

FiOS is available to only about 13.7 million potential customers nationwide, a number expected to grow to 18 million as Verizon builds out services in existing FiOS areas. Verizon has not committed to new rollouts.

“Verizon has stopped deploying fiber, and will be marketing cable broadband instead of its own services in non-fiber markets,” Sohn said. “Nationwide, cable has opened up an unsurpassable lead over DSL. Meanwhile, the wireless broadband market has become a near-duopoly, as AT&T and Verizon acquire more and more spectrum, leaving all other competitors behind.”

DOJ, FCC wrap up final details

What happens next? As mentioned, the DOJ’s antitrust division and the New York State attorney general’s office filed a civil antitrust lawsuit in US District Court to prevent Verizon and the cable companies from moving forward with their commercial agreements. But the lawsuit was filed along with the aforementioned proposed settlement resolving the concerns alleged in the lawsuit. Additionally, the consent decree seems to indicate that the deal is in its final steps.

In a statement sent to Ars, Verizon Wireless said, “As evidenced by the consent decree, we believe we have addressed the Department of Justice’s concerns. We now believe the consumer benefits of the transaction will be promptly realized, and look forward to the conclusion of the FCC review so that we can move forward with meeting the unprecedented consumer demand for innovative 4G LTE mobile and data driven products and services.”

Comcast, meanwhile, said, “we are pleased that the consent decree that we have negotiated with the Department of Justice preserves the most important goals of the agreements, including Comcast's ability to market Verizon Wireless services throughout our footprint in order to offer our customers a wireless option, Verizon Wireless' ability to market our products in virtually all of our footprint, our ability to opt into an MVNO relationship with Verizon Wireless, and the essential structure of the innovation R&D technology joint venture. We are also pleased that the FCC is circulating an order proposing approval of the spectrum sale and we are hopeful that a final order will be issued shortly.”

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced that he will be circulating that draft order in the hopes of finalizing FCC approval. The FCC concerns were alleviated in part by Verizon’s agreement to sell some spectrum to T-Mobile.

“Verizon Wireless has undertaken an unprecedented divestiture of spectrum to one of its competitors, T-Mobile, and has committed to accelerate the build-out of its new spectrum and enhance its roaming obligations,” Genachowski said. “In addition, the companies’ commercial agreements will be modified to, among other things, preserve Verizon's incentives to build out FiOS, increase wireless competition, and ensure that the proposed IP venture is pro-consumer and that its products cannot be used in anti-competitive ways.”

Genachowski’s remarks will come as small consolation to the vast majority of Americans whose only option to buy FiOS today is to move to a different state.

Promoted Comments

Federal regulation in this country is completely joke level. Their primary function is to put up an appearance of a fight.

Telecom is a perfect example for why private enterprise cannot be trusted with matters of public welfare/utility.

The internet needs to be treated as a utility, and they entire infrastructure needs to be wrested away from these companies and nationalized.

I'm not sure that putting the federal government in charge of such a project would do any good at this point. No matter who wins the election spending cuts are going to be coming (the only real choice being which how much and to which areas), thus it is very likely that the funding for current infrastructure that we have (roads, bridges, ect...) is going to be cut.

To be more direct, the companies do not see profitable growth in rolling out fiber and the federal (and most state) governments do not have the money to roll it out. We will all just have to keep our fingers crossed that Google's fiber experiment is a smashing success and sets an example on how to profitably roll out fiber, even if it is only to larger markets at first.

41 Reader Comments

Its time to separate the Wireless and Wired portions of Verizon. Verizon has too much incentive to emphasize their high margin wireless business and make internet access as scarce a commodity as possible, which fast land pipes + wifi erodes.

Markstewart is right. AT&T and Verizon are both slowing their deployments into existing service areas and stopping deployments outside of existing service areas, and trying to sell off their older DSL networks (and not finding buyers). They're trying to lose customers so they can sell wireless.

You can't force companies to compete, and unless I'm missing something, this doesn't prevent Verizon from just letting their landlines gradually die off.

He's just another scumbag lawyer, a complete phony, his former classmate (Obama) picked him to lure liberal voters and shut up consumer and NN advocacy groups but actually do nothing to make sure big industry (quasi-)monopolies keep their campaign money flowing.

Genachowski is just another a thinly-veiled worthless shill, nothing else.

In a statement sent to Ars, Verizon Wireless said, “As evidenced by the consent decree, we believe we have addressed the Department of Justice’s concerns. We now believe the consumer benefits of the transaction will be promptly realized, and look forward to the conclusion of the FCC review so that we can move forward with meeting the unprecedented consumer demand for innovative 4G LTE mobile and data driven products and services.”

LOL! So to Verizon LTE>FiOS? While I like seeing technology like LTE taking off fast, I don't see how it benefits us. We don't get FiOS and will never get it apparently. So I'm stuck with high latency "ultra speedy 12mbps" VDSL from AT&T Uverse and Comcast (who pretty much has an "outage" every week or two in my area).

I don't _WANT_ resold pile of s**t cable service. I -WANT- FiOS but Verizon won't build to where I live. It's horsecrap that this kind of thing still goes on, our internet connectivity is craptastic compared to so many other places in the world, and there is absolutely no excuse for it.

Even with the 2016 supposed end-point (after which no doubt it will be renewed because nothing will have changed), this seems to remove all incentive Verizon has to expand its FIOS area. Currently it can make money by selling cable services outside the FIOS area, but it loses that ability as soon as FIOS reaches any given area.

LOL! So to Verizon LTE>FiOS? While I like seeing technology like LTE taking off fast, I don't see how it benefits us. We don't get FiOS and will never get it apparently. So I'm stuck with high latency "ultra speedy 12mbps" VDSL from AT&T Uverse and Comcast (who pretty much has an "outage" every week or two in my area).

Thanks Verizon for looking out for us.

I see it mainly as a benefit to Verizon. Moving people's main Internet access over to LTE seems to me like a simple attempt to evade network neutrality regulations through the Great Wireless Loophole(tm). Avoid the (rightfully, but minimally) regulated hard lines and instead push everyone to a medium where Verizon et al have carte blanche to impose data caps, nickel-and-dime us just to get feature parity ("you want a residential gateway? we want our tethering service charge!"), and generally muck with our traffic as they wish.

What's really sad is that my AT&T 4G/LTE service (with the "unlimited" data grandfathered in) is faster than my TWC land-line. But god forbid I tether it for free, or use any significant amount of data within my billing cycle.

DOJ/FCC might as well have removed our trousers and tied our wrists to our ankles.

Federal regulation in this country is completely joke level. Their primary function is to put up an appearance of a fight.

Telecom is a perfect example for why private enterprise cannot be trusted with matters of public welfare/utility.

The internet needs to be treated as a utility, and they entire infrastructure needs to be wrested away from these companies and nationalized.

I'm not sure that putting the federal government in charge of such a project would do any good at this point. No matter who wins the election spending cuts are going to be coming (the only real choice being which how much and to which areas), thus it is very likely that the funding for current infrastructure that we have (roads, bridges, ect...) is going to be cut.

To be more direct, the companies do not see profitable growth in rolling out fiber and the federal (and most state) governments do not have the money to roll it out. We will all just have to keep our fingers crossed that Google's fiber experiment is a smashing success and sets an example on how to profitably roll out fiber, even if it is only to larger markets at first.

Consumer demand for innovative 4G LTE services? Yeah right. They can take their 1 GB of 4G data for $100/month and shove it up their ass.

Edit: Also, having FiOS in your area isn't much consolation when the cheapest internet plan is $75/month. Yeah that's great "competition."

$75 is a great deal compared to any wireless data plan from any provider in the US. LTE will compete with FiOS when you can do streaming video without it being prohibitively expensive just to use the network. Cable companies certainly don't mind if you have to pay for cable TV instead of streaming stuff, though. In fact, it seems very much like cable companies and Verizon are attempting to turn the internet in the US into a modern version of 90's AOL - they control the content, the access, and you pay for how much you use. We are very clearly going backwards here in spite of technology moving things forward. That's a very good indication that something is wrong!

I'm not sure that putting the federal government in charge of such a project would do any good at this point. No matter who wins the election spending cuts are going to be coming (the only real choice being which how much and to which areas), thus it is very likely that the funding for current infrastructure that we have (roads, bridges, ect...) is going to be cut.

To be more direct, the companies do not see profitable growth in rolling out fiber and the federal (and most state) governments do not have the money to roll it out. We will all just have to keep our fingers crossed that Google's fiber experiment is a smashing success and sets an example on how to profitably roll out fiber, even if it is only to larger markets at first.

(This isn't necessarily directed at you, but your assessment of the current situation hit a nerve.)

The federal government does have a revenue source. I realize the attention span of the average citizen seems to be too short to comprehend any reasoned argument, but imagine, for example, if the US government did decide to lay its own fibre and operate a world-class Internet-access network. Rather than paying Comcast and others $100+/month for some limited bandwidth, people might pay significantly less in additional taxes to fund a non-profit, open, nationwide rollout and maintenance.

Yes, I just suggested we raise taxes to pay for societal improvements. Please don't shoot me.

In fact, it seems very much like cable companies and Verizon are attempting to turn the internet in the US into a modern version of 90's AOL - they control the content, the access, and you pay for how much you use. We are very clearly going backwards here in spite of technology moving things forward. That's a very good indication that something is wrong!

Now we can see how our nation went from first (or in the top 3) in broadband to just about dead last. What the hell? In 1999, my home in Woodstock, GA was one of the first to be plugged into BellSouth's IFITL (fiber) and it was great. After 2 years they had oversold the service and it took myself and a handful of other newsgroup members, to call BS to tell them their IP pool was full. We had a direct line to a gentleman who got things done that the rest of that company could not. Still- I would rather have that than this shit we have now.

I hooked up CLEAR last week after firing Comcast for over-billing me for the 3rd month in a row. Last month they charged more fees than the actual monthly bill!!!

It is pathetic the state our nation is in right now. Where the hell are all the adults?

The phone company was a behemoth monopoly for decades until it was sliced up in 1984. It's parts have slowly been stitching themselves back together ever since. And now it appears Frankenstein has a bride.

Maybe it is clearly written somewhere, but I missed it - has anyone analyzed the economic reasons Verizon decided to stop building out FIOS, and even sell of some of its FIOS coverage areas? I seem to remember Verizon was once very positive about doing FIOS as fast as they could, everywhere they could. Then, boom, they switched horses. What's the money and/or regulatory reason behind this?

I am surprised the DOJ managed to preserve any competition at all. The idea there could be a market for supplying a cable to a home is about as bizarre as imagining there could be a market for supply electricity poles to a house, or a road, or water, or sewage. These things all tend toward a monopoly for the obvious reason.

The end result is majority of US citizens have ended up with no choice as to who the local loop provider is, and that majority is growing every year. Don't feel like you are alone - the situation is the same in just about every other country. It is unlikely there is any solution - we all end up just having to wear the fact it isn't cost effective to run more than one cable past the front of our house, and only one entity can own that cable.

What is different is that while the local loop provider is necessarily a monopoly, most countries have managed to arrange things so the broadband provider (ie, the ISP), isn't. In other words they have managed to restrict the monopoly to just the local loop and have a thriving competitive market for everything that is supplied over it. The US with it's steadfast belief in laissez-faire capitalism has the the market decide, and the utterly predictable outcome isn't pretty.

The US did come to it's senses with electricity supply, so the now home owner doesn't have to buy power off the company owns the poles outside of his house. Presumably it will come to it senses with the supply of bytes too. But you have to wonder how many decades away that is.

So there's not enough competition, because anti-competitive agreements only benefit companies when they control enough of the industry not too worry about other competition muscling in on the things they agree to not compete on with each other.

The obvious solution is then to increase competition. And the fastest way to do this is break up Verizon, AT&T, et. al along the lines of wireless providers versus landline providers. Separate Verizon's FIOS and DSL services from its Wireless services and there would then be competitive incentive for the Wired Services business to compete, even if it provides less of a profit margin.

Cedar Falls Utilities is installing to-the-premises fiber optic cable throughout the community. Construction on the three-year, $17 million project is set to begin this fall.

That's not exactly a big deployment either, covers maybe 12,000 homes and businesses. Oh and plenty of infrastructure is reused in this case as well.

Not actually bad. If they get 50% uptake, $50 a month would pay it off in 5 years. Yes, there would be maintenance costs and whatnot, just saying it's still not bad. $75 a month for the stated 75Mbps might do it.

Not that it really matters; there's no way I'm getting a $17M loan.

And since TX, in it's infinite wisdom, decided to make municipal rollouts illegal, that's not likely to change soon. I need to see if maybe there's already an organization or group working to change that.

And since TX, in it's infinite wisdom, decided to make municipal rollouts illegal, that's not likely to change soon. I need to see if maybe there's already an organization or group working to change that.

Hrm, apparently I was wrong. The latest I can find offhand is that there was some language to block it, but it got removed from the bill.

Maybe it is clearly written somewhere, but I missed it - has anyone analyzed the economic reasons Verizon decided to stop building out FIOS, and even sell of some of its FIOS coverage areas? I seem to remember Verizon was once very positive about doing FIOS as fast as they could, everywhere they could. Then, boom, they switched horses. What's the money and/or regulatory reason behind this?

The idea that has been a running theme with everyone, that Verizon is shifting it's focus from FIOS to wireless seems to be more or less correct. Beyond that, if the first article is to be believed, it seems they are doing so only after getting tax breaks to develop it in certain areas.

Maybe it is clearly written somewhere, but I missed it - has anyone analyzed the economic reasons Verizon decided to stop building out FIOS, and even sell of some of its FIOS coverage areas? I seem to remember Verizon was once very positive about doing FIOS as fast as they could, everywhere they could. Then, boom, they switched horses. What's the money and/or regulatory reason behind this?

The idea that has been a running theme with everyone, that Verizon is shifting it's focus from FIOS to wireless seems to be more or less correct. Beyond that, if the first article is to be believed, it seems they are doing so only after getting tax breaks to develop it in certain areas.

Thanks. But while both articles try to explain what Verizon did with FIOS, neither makes much more than a hazy guess as to why Verizon did it.

I'm not sure that putting the federal government in charge of such a project would do any good at this point. No matter who wins the election spending cuts are going to be coming (the only real choice being which how much and to which areas), thus it is very likely that the funding for current infrastructure that we have (roads, bridges, ect...) is going to be cut.

To be more direct, the companies do not see profitable growth in rolling out fiber and the federal (and most state) governments do not have the money to roll it out. We will all just have to keep our fingers crossed that Google's fiber experiment is a smashing success and sets an example on how to profitably roll out fiber, even if it is only to larger markets at first.

(This isn't necessarily directed at you, but your assessment of the current situation hit a nerve.)

The federal government does have a revenue source. I realize the attention span of the average citizen seems to be too short to comprehend any reasoned argument, but imagine, for example, if the US government did decide to lay its own fibre and operate a world-class Internet-access network. Rather than paying Comcast and others $100+/month for some limited bandwidth, people might pay significantly less in additional taxes to fund a non-profit, open, nationwide rollout and maintenance.

Yes, I just suggested we raise taxes to pay for societal improvements. Please don't shoot me.

I wouldn't agree about the 'significantly less' part, but as for the rest, it is quite possible. Telecommunications falls, finally, into the category of a natural monopoly. Government has repeatedly tried to create competition only to have the market return to at best a duopoly or a de facto monopoly. The old joke that the government broke up AT&T and in return got AT&T isn't funny anymore.

So there's not enough competition, because anti-competitive agreements only benefit companies when they control enough of the industry not too worry about other competition muscling in on the things they agree to not compete on with each other.

The obvious solution is then to increase competition. And the fastest way to do this is break up Verizon, AT&T, et. al along the lines of wireless providers versus landline providers. Separate Verizon's FIOS and DSL services from its Wireless services and there would then be competitive incentive for the Wired Services business to compete, even if it provides less of a profit margin.

We already tried that and failed and the reason for the failure should be an object lesson to all. Cable, land-line, and wireless providers were all supposed to be in competition with one another but what they chiefly competed at was seeing which companies managed to co-opt the local elected officials, later the state, and finally the federal. The purchase price for a local monopoly was 'a piece of the action' (memorable words to all Star Trek the original series fans). Rent-seeking behavior, at all levels, and these supposed competitors did it quite well.

The only tenable solution would be to completely remove the 'competitors' from the playing field on the last mile and all cell tower provisioning. Good luck with that although it is the only solution that leaves the consumer somewhat whole. Otherwise, we get so-called reforms that actually end up with worse results. We've already be there, done that, bought the "I'm soooo Stupid" t-shirts. Sorry.

Maybe it is clearly written somewhere, but I missed it - has anyone analyzed the economic reasons Verizon decided to stop building out FIOS, and even sell of some of its FIOS coverage areas? I seem to remember Verizon was once very positive about doing FIOS as fast as they could, everywhere they could. Then, boom, they switched horses. What's the money and/or regulatory reason behind this?

Personal opinion on the reason:

They've rolled it out everywhere that mattered. The owners living around New York can get it, and the regulators living around Washington D.C. can get it. So anyone you complain to doesn't see the problem (it doesn't affect them). No one else matters. There's just enough extra coverage that it's not blatantly obvious this was the plan, so they won't have to spend money to defend themselves in the court of public opinion.

The problem back when FiOS was brand new and in development, was that they basically had to sue their way into cable franchises in every tiny little municipality around the country. I know in my local area, the phone company has an unbreakable exclusivity agreement and there will NEVER be wired competition for phone, internet, or TV, simply because FiOS does all three, and Verizon won't roll it out unless they can provide all three. The municipalities, firmly in the pocket of the phone or cable companies, make it impossible. The only way to get around these things is over the air, either from satellites or cell towers. The phone and cable company compete with internet, but we're talking slow DSL vs. slow cable.

Now, maybe the legal environment has gotten better over the years, I don't really know except locally where it sucks. But it seems to me Verizon isn't to blame here, it's whoever in the local government set up these monopolies to begin with. FiOS is a great service, I know people who have had it and I wish I did too. I'm sure Verzion would love to sell it to more people if they could. As it is though, the environment does not allow them to very easily; Wireless is much easier and more profitable. They're a business and they go where the money is.

The problem back when FiOS was brand new and in development, was that they basically had to sue their way into cable franchises in every tiny little municipality around the country. I know in my local area, the phone company has an unbreakable exclusivity agreement and there will NEVER be wired competition for phone, internet, or TV, simply because FiOS does all three, and Verizon won't roll it out unless they can provide all three. The municipalities, firmly in the pocket of the phone or cable companies, make it impossible. The only way to get around these things is over the air, either from satellites or cell towers. The phone and cable company compete with internet, but we're talking slow DSL vs. slow cable.

Now, maybe the legal environment has gotten better over the years, I don't really know except locally where it sucks. But it seems to me Verizon isn't to blame here, it's whoever in the local government set up these monopolies to begin with. FiOS is a great service, I know people who have had it and I wish I did too. I'm sure Verzion would love to sell it to more people if they could. As it is though, the environment does not allow them to very easily; Wireless is much easier and more profitable. They're a business and they go where the money is.

This, however, does not explain New Jersey, where they do not have to make municipal agreements.

This is insane. Now that moronic 6 strike program (supported by all of the ISPs involved in this deal) will also go into effect soon and due to the dramatically reduced competition from this sale, MOST customers will not be able to choose an ISP that is not participating in the program. In effect, the DOJ and the FCC have just given internet regulation authority to the private sector which has very little incentive to keep the consumers best interests in mind................

Ok, seriously...does anyone have some numbers on what a local fiber rollout would cost?

I'm starting to think I should just see about DIYing it.

I don't have the article handy, but Amsterdam did a full rollout to every commercial and residential address for about 700Euro per location and allows multiple ISP's to compete for individual customers over those wires. I believe 25-35 euro/month is a typical subscription fee for 100mbps+ service.

Austrailia is currently building out fiber to the premises for about 93% of its addresses, with the other 7% covered by a wireless or satellite build out. Australia is spending $38.9B US, not including an extortionate payment to monopolist Telestra of an additional $11B.

If they can do it in Amsterdam, a dense urban area with lots of historic buildings, and other obstacles, most of the US could be done for a lower per-drop price. Verizon FIOS was costing between $700-1100 per drop but some of that likely includes the marketing and the fact that they were only installing the drops on a as-needed basis in mostly wealthy suburbs and a few wealthy neighborhoods in major East Coast cities with some of the oldest infrastructure and highest costs.

If we had spent $180B on fiber rollouts instead of bailing out AIG's creditors (the same big banks that already had their own bailout) or the $200+B that we spent taking Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac back from the private sector managers that crashed them.

Hell we could negotiate on Medicare Part D drug prices, save $25B every year and fund broadband with that money over 10 years easily.

Ok, seriously...does anyone have some numbers on what a local fiber rollout would cost?

I'm starting to think I should just see about DIYing it.

If the powers that be didn't manage to convince your representatives to make such a thing illegal by way of lobbying and campaign contributions, I hope you're prepared to keep a few tens of millions on hand to defend yourself against all of the lawsuits that will be brought against you by your incumbent broadband competitors to-be.